Type 88 K1 Tank

Mattias Björk
M1 Abraham's little brother.

EricB
I'm just building this right now, I enjoy the challenge, nothing fits and the diagrams are not the same as the parts, However some nice fantasy tank has formed from the parts after some modifications and some luck.. Avoid this model and the Academy one looks like a clone of this but with corrected/chunkier parts.

Mattias Björk
I'm building a SAM-6 kit from Trumpeter that is molded from 2005 or prior. There is a lot of extra plastic on most parts and as you mention the fitting is not great. Perhaps newer kits from Trumpeter are much better. So yeah I would agree to avoid earlier kits from Trumpeter at least. The details on the kit is how ever decent.

EricB
I find it's more tempting to begin the cheap kits due to the lack of pressure / expectations. Actually I only started this one because it got damaged in the post, so it was both cheap and unsellable...

Karel Doležal
Yes, I also purchased this model very cheaply on sale. I have these cheap models for testing dyeing techniques. Yes the parts don't fit very well, plastic tracks after a lot of modification. Just a model for a beginner.

EricB
Today I was doing those tiny grab handles, I lost two of them after they pinged out of the tweezers, I searched the carpet for a while then gave up. Then I looked back at the pile of handles and they were all present, somehow they had BOTH pinged around the desk and landed back in the pile.. What are the odds of that?

Karel Doležal
That was a Christmas miracle 🙂. It happens to me too, it shoots up somewhere, I look for it, give up and then find it on the table in front of me.

Neuling
The bags in my vacuum cleaner always must be full of all those precious little things I miss on my workbench ...... 🙂

Mattias Björk
Most of the parts that gets lost in my room eventually shows up again. Hopefully they does not get mangled by the chair I'm sitting in. But its quite frustrating to spend a lot of time trying to find some part on the floor. And my floor is quite dark so the parts often have same or similar color as the floor. So it takes some time to find the parts that could be used to build. But some times the part only fly a couple of hand lengths and are easy to find again.

EricB
It would cost kit makers nothing to include a few spares for the tiny parts, maybe they think it would confuse the modeller?

Carlos Cisneros
Looks all ready for paint now. That always helps appearances.

Mattias Björk
@EricB, I agree that some of the smaller and fragile parts could have at least ONE extra. But even better if its a pair.